A change of climate

There's no doubt that climate change was a big factor precipitating John Howard's defeat, even if it wasn't front and centre in the campaign itself as the debate over "economic management" alternated with the never ending Coalition gaffe show as the big story.

We'll have to await some decent research - probably 'til the next Australian Electoral Study comes out - to see exactly how much a role global warming played, but I have a strong suspicion that the very large swings to Labor in both the youth demographic and in Queensland and South Australia where water really is a dire issue were closely related to climate change.

It was interesting last night, and then, when surprisingly after a day and an evening which progressively got finer and nicer, there was a quick downpour of rain around midnight here in Sydney. I remember very well - twenty years ago - being in a cab travelling from St Lucia to Kangaroo Point when Joh Bjelke-Petersen's reign finally ended. I could see enormous storm clouds building up - it was as if the heavens were reflecting the drama being played out down on the land. Perhaps one myth that might be put to the test is the one Bob Hawke half jokingly created - that the election of a Labor government ends droughts.

My point here, though, is that most commentators raking over the ashes of the Coalition's ruin today are sticking pretty closely to the "media narrative" script that dominated discussion of the campaign - and politics all year.

It's almost as if the question the Coalition, numerous pollsters and endless pundits asked themselves and each other over and over again - "how can the government be in trouble when the economy is so good?" is still hanging there in the air somewhere.

It's one myth that has been shattered by this election result. But, quite possibly, the salience of "economic management" was always a myth to start with.

There are two senses in which this is true. First, the Australian people have decisively shown that "it's not the economy, stupid" - at least not in terms of all the lovely numbers the member for Higgins kept boasting about. As I'm suggesting, there are other key issues which have contributed to the swing to Labor. But even on the economic turf, what Bill Bowtell has called "the lived economy" isn't just about the difficulties and strains of making ends meet in a world where a deregulated labour market makes insecurity a daily reality, though it is about that.

It's also about quality of life issues - even "values", if you like. Put very simply, Australia is not America and we don't live by the same myths about meritocracy and hard work always being rewarded. We're very well aware that the workplace can be a nasty place, and that there is a role for solidarity, for balance, and dare I say it, for unions.

One of the key factors which made WorkChoices unpopular was the way in which it offended a basic sense of fairness which is widely shared. So, even though many might have felt that "Australia was heading in the right direction" or that they were personally doing ok, they were also well aware that many others were in danger of being pushed into an underclass of the working poor.

John Howard was quite right to say that his losing the election would be a repudiation of industrial relations "reform". Ironically, perhaps, because it was the conservatives who were always the ones touting "values" as central to the culture wars, some genuine Australian values have just been reaffirmed by the people in no uncertain terms.

Secondly, as I've been alluding to when discussing poll-talk and the nattering of the chattering political classes, there's something very wrong about the way in which politics has been discussed in this country. The fact that it took so long for most of the Canberra press gallery to see what was under their noses the whole time - that a decision had been made in favour of Kevin Rudd some time ago and that it was always going to stick 'til election day - is itself indicative of what Joan Didion calls "the disconnect".

The hermetic circle of the Canberra-centric political class constructed a narrative which almost floated completely free of reality during this election year. Even though we will no doubt see a shift away from culture wars ranting and constantly misinterpreted polls, what we really need to see is a shift towards a discussion of politics as if it really matters - how policy affects people's lives, not the constant talk about "process" issues and the horse race.

I might be being a tad idealistic here, but it seems to me that Kevin Rudd spoke a language all year which "cut through" precisely because it was attuned to lived experience. So I've got at least some hope that one thing that will change about Australia is the way we talk about politics. It would be a very good thing indeed if attentiveness to the impacts of policy and the values which underlie political choices became a characteristic of the Rudd era.